Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, is calling on the IT industry to cut energy use by 20 per cent by 2020.
She said existing measures would only deliver 13 per cent by the deadline, but better use of ICT could help Europe hit the 20 per cent target. Smart metering could save European …

Exactly the right point

"But the industry, which only accounts for two per cent of CO2 emissions within Europe, can also help other industries to cut their energy use by better use of technology."

This is too true. There should be more pressure in order to come up with efficient systems, but this would only make sense as part of the normal upgrade cycle. While there has been a lot of focus on mimimising the power requirements of the CPU, it seems that there has been less on other elements (chipset, discrete graphics). Virtualisation will help though.

The other issue is trying to use the waste heat from server rooms. I'm currently working on sustainable building design where we are utilising some 30MWh of low grade heat from servers to contribute to the overall building heat demand. This would otherwise be lost (and saves money).

EU

EU can shuve its head up its arse. Tech industry is gonna need more power, dumb f---s should have made sure we had good nuclear power plants and invested some real money in fusion instead of wasting it on rubbish.

Seriously as a global community we spend more on plastic bags each year then on researching fusion power. We deserve to become extinct.

Title

@Lionel Baden

By 2020 I suspect the a new server will be required by anyone, all they need to do is buy something that is more energy efficient. Buying a server out of it's normal replacement/depreciation cycle would probably cost more energy than it would save.

@AC 1121 - At my company we have managed to save multiple MW in our major datacentres in recent years, while using more servers, more storage and more networking gear. You just need to think about what you do.

Grr

Dumb idea - if they really want reduce energy usage (and presumably this is one of those "green" directives) then IT energy use needs to rise, not fall. The energy cost of a few emails and a video conferencing has to be lower than hauling my sorry butt miles via car/plane/train. Computers could (not "will", but "could") help crunch the numbers to get us more efficient distribution networks and distribute information at a very low energy cost, etc etc etc.

You first, Viviane!

The EU merrily pisses away millions of Euros, and Gigawatts of energy, shuffling between Bruxelles and Strasbourg every six months. How about the EU stops doing that first, before demanding efficiency savings from everybody else?

Bloody Cheek

How come the EU is "demanding" anything? It would be truly amazing if the EU was told about the demands made by all of us regarding accountability of their finances and book balancing.

When those in charge begin listening to we, the proles, in this regard then, and only then, can they make their outrageous demands. They are a bunch of thieves, as are most of the political classes, they should be made accountable in law to their constituents. They should be forced to balance the books annually and show that regard for the money of others, because it is our money they spend. When that happens they will have a chance of my support, but not until then. If any of the parliamentarians of the EU read this, which I beg leave to doubt as they will be busy reading their bank statements, I have moved and cannot be found so it's no good sending round "the boys" for an informal chat.